Biology EE - Biochemistry Topic

Recommended Posts

For my EE I am planning on using a research question somewhere along the lines of "How can biopolymers be used as a treatment for primary angle closure glaucoma?"

My main concern is that it's a biochemistry related question but I plan on submitting it as a biology EE. Is the topic too risky? I would hate to receive low marks because it was more chemistry based. I was also thinking my RQ might be too narrow?

I'm in Year 1 and still in the process of beginning research so a topic change wouldn't be the end of the world.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

It might be wise to try to investigate other EEs more focused on either Bio or Chem, as Biology is defined as "the science that deals with living organisms and life processes" (from the 2013 EE guide), while Chemistry is defined as "the science that deals with the composition, characterization and transformation of
substances", so there does seem to be elements of both subjects in your topic. Your RQ is probably narrow enough - I'm quite sure it'd be enough for 4000 words (it's not actually a lot). How are you going to investigate it though? Treatment of glaucoma with biopolymers doesn't seem to be covered that well even in scholarly articles, and it'd be quite difficult to do something novel in an EE.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I was planning on focusing the essay on vision processes and anatomy and then use my more specific research on biopolymers for my Chemistry IA (so it's kinda like two birds one stone). And then there has been a lot of research on using animal models for glaucoma treatment so the very loose outline of my investigation would be to use my background in human anatomy and either mouse or zebrafish anatomy to develop "prototypes" of treatment polymers.

I will still look for more topic options though so I can have some good backup plans.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Would your EE be mostly theoretical then? I've heard that science EEs based purely off theory generally don't score as well as experimental ones (although there do exist exceptions, I'm pretty sure), so just a thought to keep in mind.